Middle English PDF

Middle English Do Now 1150CE ~ 1500CE Do now Use the etymological dictionary to trace the history of these words: Beef & ox Mutton & sheep Veal & Calf Pork & Pig What do...

Middle English Do Now 1150CE ~ 1500CE Do now Use the etymological dictionary to trace the history of these words: Beef & ox Mutton & sheep Veal & Calf Pork & Pig What do you observe about the pairs? Write a prediction about why that might be, based on your knowledge so far. Middle English LISC 1150CE ~ 1500CE Middle English Learning Intention: Success Criteria: To investigate the linguistic I can identify characteristics of characteristics of Middle Old English in a sample text. English. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Norman Invasion/Conquest In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of Add this Normandy (part of modern France), invaded and conquered England. The new conquerors (called information into the Normans) brought with them a kind of French, your timeline. which became the language of the Royal Court, Include: and the ruling and business classes. When The Middle English period saw French rulers on Who the throne and the use of English outlawed in What written works and public domains from 1100 until Where 1362. During this time, English was still the Impact on vernacular (the language widely spoken by ‘English’ ordinary people), but it underwent many unrecorded changes that are now impossible to trace. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Fancy French Words Old Norman, the language of the ruling class, influenced the existing Anglo-Saxon language, Add this forming more of an Anglo-Norman tongue. To information describe roles and activities introduced by the new arrivals, English borrowed lexemes from French, such into your as 'joust', 'lute' and 'bounty' pertaining to court life. timeline. Since Latin had prestige in the French Norman court, Include: much of the vocabulary relating to the law, When governance and religion was Latinate in origin. For instance, 'tort', 'edict' and 'tabernacle' entered Who English at this time and are still used today. Important What documents of governance, such as the Magna Carta Where (1215), were written in Latin. Impact on This period laid the foundations for French and Latin terms being perceived as more formal than their ‘English’ Anglo-Saxon or Germanic counterparts. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Famine Old Norse, the language of the people living in the Danelaw (the eastern region of Britain, which was under the laws of Danish tradition) continued to heavily influence the shape of English. As Add this these settlers connected, traded and intermarried with their information Anglo-Saxon neighbours, their language influenced the into your inflectional morphology of Middle English among the lower timeline. classes. This was especially notable in the dialects of Northern and East Midlands regions of Britain at the time, since they were Include: closest to where Old Norse was being spoken. When A sudden change in the climate in Europe resulted in the Great Who Famine, from 1315 to 1317. Crops failed and many people What starved, so crime and death rates quickly increased. The extent Where of the famine was such that, in August 1315, even the King of England, Edward Il, is said to have been unable to get any bread Impact while travelling with his entourage. With smaller agricultural on communities failing, many people headed for larger cities, ‘English’ bringing with them regional linguistic variation. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Plague Unfortunately, following this explosion of city populations, bubonic plague, referred to as the Add this Black Death, swept through Britain information into from around 1348 until 1353. It is your timeline. thought that forty-five or fifty per cent Include: of the population of Europe was killed When by the disease (or even more, Who according to some scholars). What The loss of life resulted in further Where mixing of varieties of Middle English, Impact on assisting the standardisation of the ‘English’ language but also eliminating some regional varieties. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE They weren’t good at counting The Hundred Years War, a series of conflicts between England and France, Add this raged from 1337 to 1453 and resulted in information into English people perceiving French as the your timeline. language of the enemy. The English Include: language was reinstated as the official When language of England from 1362. While Who this separated England and France What politically and linguistically and created Where a strong sense of national pride for the Impact on English people, the existing borrowings ‘English’ from French had taken hold, so English has retained words from that source, such as 'dress', 'scent' and 'beef. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Print!! Towards the end of the Middle English period, the English language still had distinct regional Add this variations with no standard form; however, information technological advancements were beginning to give wider access to texts, particularly into your through Johannes Gutenberg's invention of timeline. the printing press in 1440. This transformed Include: the long, technical, and arduous job of When copying books out by hand to a much faster process that enabled mass production of Who texts at a fraction of the price. What This technology was introduced to England by Where William Caxton, who brought his printing Impact on press from Belgium to London around 1476 ‘English’ and produced the first print edition of Chaucer's The Canterbury tales. Middle English Activity 1150CE ~ 1500CE The Canterbury Tales Read through the information on page 12 and answer the following: What was Chaucer’s primary aim in writing "The Canterbury Tales"? Chaucer aimed to present a series of stories within a linking framework. What aspect of the syntax in "The General Prologue" reflects medieval thinking? What does this suggest compared to Old English texts? The complex syntax, including lengthy adverbial clauses and subordinate elements, reflects medieval thinking on nature and the universe. This suggests a greater worldview and shifts from OE texts that were mostly religious. Middle English Reflect 1150CE ~ 1500CE Reflection Explain the impact of the Norman invasion on the English aristocracy and the subsequent influence on language. The Norman invasion brought French-speaking nobility to England, establishing French as the language of the ruling class. This introduced French vocabulary and influenced English as a language of prestige and power. Middle English Do Now 1150CE ~ 1500CE The Canterbury Tales Read through the information on page 12 and answer the following: What was Chaucer’s primary aim in writing "The Canterbury Tales"? Chaucer aimed to present a series of stories within a linking framework. What aspect of the syntax in "The General Prologue" reflects medieval thinking? What does this suggest compared to Old English texts? The complex syntax, including lengthy adverbial clauses and subordinate elements, reflects medieval thinking on nature and the universe. This suggests a greater worldview and shifts from OE texts that were mostly religious. Middle English LISC 1150CE ~ 1500CE Middle English Learning Intention: Success Criteria: To investigate the linguistic I can identify characteristics of characteristics of Middle Middle English in a sample text. English. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Alphabet What word is this? GHOTI What if I add these words: tough, women, nation? Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion) suggested that on the basis of modern English spelling conventions we might as well spell fish as ghoti: gh (tough), o (women), ti (nation) English spelling has been evolving for over 1,000 years The complications were caused many different linguistic and social events Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Alphabet Print brought with it one problem: orthography. Early writers of this new English, such as Geoffrey Chaucer, gave it a fairly consistent spelling system, but this was soon diluted by Chancery clerks who re-spelled words based on French orthography. English spelling consistency was dealt a further blow when William Caxton brought the printing press to London in 1476. Having lived in mainland Europe for the preceding 30 years, his grasp of the English spelling system had become uncertain. The Belgian assistants whom he brought to help him set up his business had an even poorer command of it. As printing developed, printers began to develop individual preferences or "house styles". Typesetters were paid by the line and were fond of making words longer. English required standardision – a code of grammar and conventions. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Alphabet Bullokar’s pamphlet for Grammar – 1586 Heavily influenced by latin grammar Believed English should hold the same prestige – Latin died in like 600- 750CE More like Latin = sounds more like other European languages (check your tree!) Bullokar is responsible for the word ‘verb’ derived from Latin (verbum in Latin is ‘word’) and the associated verb tenses (simplex, continnus, perfectum continua, perfectus) Separated plurals and singular suffixes for possession – singular = -is, plural = -es Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Alphabet Dr Johnson’s Dictionary Mid 1700s Not the first dictionary, but a really notable one – received a lot of criticism Made the entire thing with 6 typographers and made most of the etymologies from his own knowledge, got things wrong Included words that were not real (this is to indicate copyright and still happens) Those words became part of English anyway Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Alphabet Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Alphabet Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Alphabet Removal of: Eth ‘ð’ as in /ð/ as in this – replaced with ‘th’ Wynn ‘ƿ’ as in /w/ as in way – replaced with ‘w’ Ash ‘æ’ as in /æ/ as in act – replaced with ‘a’ Thorn ‘þ’, as in /θ/ as in thing remains for a while Graphemes ‘j’ ‘k’ ‘q’ & ‘z’ appear Graphemes ‘j’ & ‘l’ and ‘u’ & ‘v’ used interchangeably Middle English Activity 1150CE ~ 1500CE Alphabet: Annotating The Canterbury Tales Eth replaced ‘z’ with ‘th’ grapheme appears ‘k’ grapheme appears Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Phonetics Middle English generally did not have silent letters. For example, knight was pronounced [ˈkniçt] (with both the ⟨k⟩ and the ⟨gh⟩ pronounced, the latter sounding as the ⟨ch⟩ in German Knecht). The major exception was the silent ⟨e⟩ – originally pronounced, but lost in normal speech by Chaucer's time. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Phonetics The Great Vowel Shift GVS was a major upheaval of the pronunciation of long vowels, taking place between 1400 – 1700CE The 7 ‘long vowels’ each moved up one position in the mouth, with the highest vowels moving into diphthongs. It wasn’t orderly and didn’t happen overnight, but grandparents and grandchildren pronounced words differently. The ‘causes’ of the Great Vowel Shift are unknown, but there are a few main reasons theorised: Population migration due to the black death French loan words The rise of the middle class Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Phonetics By the end of the sixteenth century the "e" in "sheep" sounded like that in Modern English "sheep" or "meet" [IPA /i/], rather than ‘shehp’ Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Middle English Activity 1150CE ~ 1500CE Phonetics: Annotating The Canterbury Tales The ‘e’ to be pronounced is followed by another letter and were not yet distinguished as two separate letter forms but as alternate ways of writing one letter. (This is why today we still call the letter double-u!) So each could signify the consonant or a vowel. Their distribution depended on where they appeared in a word. The form was preferred as an initial letter: vs, vnkind, vnder; was used anywhere else: haue, euil, euer, heauen. Doubling a vowel is one way to indicate length, but not always found Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Lexicology/Syntax Influx of Latin and Greek words to denote abstract ideas and concepts, influencing spelling of existing words at times. Increased to around 100,000 words The subject and object forms of words merged over time, so the order of the lexemes in the sentence became more important for determining grammatical roles, such as consistently placing the subject in the initial position, followed by the verb, finishing with the object. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Morphology - overview Gradual loss of inflectional morphemes and cases Accusative and dative cases merge into a pronoun system Second-person singular present tense verbs in the indicative mood (to express statements or questions) both required ‘–(e)st’ to be added – so ‘you take’ would be ‘thou takest’ The ‘-en’ inflection used to mark present tense verbs in the second person plural was only used in formal discourse – so ‘ye eaten’ became ‘ye eat’ By the end of the period, present-tense third person singular verbs all took ‘-s’ rather than ‘-est’. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Morphology - Nouns Middle English retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from the more complex system of inflection in Old English. The distinct dative case was lost in early Middle English. The genitive survived, however, but by the end of the Middle English period, only the strong -'s ending (variously spelt) was in use. The strong -(e)s plural form has survived into Modern English. The weak -(e)n form is now rare and used only in oxen and, as part of a double plural, in children and brethren. Strong nouns Weak nouns Nouns Singular Plural Singular Plural Nominative -e -(e) -es Accusative -en Genitive -es -e(ne) -en Dative -e -e(s) Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Morphology - Nouns Below is an example of how nouns in Middle English were marked with morphemes based on their grammatical function in the clause, focusing on Quēn (meaning ‘queen’). Letters marked in brackets were included in some dialects but not all. Middle English Activity 1150CE ~ 1500CE Nouns: Annotating The Canterbury Tales Plural, -es, strong noun, meaning young shoots Plural, -es, strong noun, meaning land Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Morphology - Pronouns Pronouns lost the dual form for first- and second-person pronouns, retaining the singular and plural forms for all. In many dialects, accusative cases (for objects of the clause) and dative cases (for receiver of the object) merged, which then required the use of a preposition to indicate who or what was the receiver of the object. The preposition used in English for this is ‘to’, as in ‘You give the flowers to him’. Middle English saw the genitive case break into possessive pronouns as distinct from possessive determiners. Reflexive forms for personal pronouns appeared to clarify when the same agent was both the subject and the object; for example, þou lovest þi selven ‘You love yourself’. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Morphology - Pronouns Middle English personal pronouns were mostly developed from those of Old English, with the exception of the third-person plural, a borrowing from Old Norse As with nouns, there was some inflectional simplification (the distinct Old English dual forms were lost), but pronouns, unlike nouns, retained distinct nominative and accusative forms. 1st person 2nd person 3rd person Personal Singular pronouns Singular Plural Singular Plural Plural Feminine Masculine (he) Neuter (it) (she) Nominative ic, I wē þ(o)u ye he sche(o) hit þei Accusative mi (o)us þe you hine hi(r)e hit þem Possessive pn. min (o)ures þin yours his heo(re) his þeir Dative mi (o)us þe you him hi(r)e him þem Possessive det. min (en) (o)ure þi yower his heo(re) his þeir Reflexive mi selven us self þi selven youselve him-selved heo-self hit-sulve þem-selve Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Determiners Old English had multiple forms of the determiners that translated to ‘the’ or ‘that’, such as se, þone, þæs and þæm. These were also simplified into a single form, þe, for most of the Middle English period, until the use of thorn ended. The similarity between ‘þ’ and ‘y’ when handwritten explains the frequent mistranslation of ‘the’ as ‘ye’, with typographers of early texts also using ‘y’ when their printers did not carry a tile for ‘þ’. Middle English Activity 1150CE ~ 1500CE Pronouns & Determiners: Annotating The Canterbury Tales Masc. possessive pronoun Unsure of this one – is ‘her’ but dative and nature? Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Verbs While irregular forms of nouns tended to solely affect the inflectional morphemes, English blended a number of verbs from different origins to construct the modern language’s more irregular verbs, as is seen with the conjugation of the verb ‘to be’. While ‘be’ and ‘been’ come from the same Old English verb bēon, the past tense ‘was’ and ‘were’ come from a different verb wesan. Another example is the verb ‘to go’, taking its simple past tense from the verb wenden, while other forms come from gan. Middle English ExpT 1150CE ~ 1500CE Morphology - Verbs As a general rule, the indicative first person singular of verbs in the present tense ends in -e (ich here, 'I hear'), the second person in -(e)st (þou spekest, 'thou speakest'), and the third person in -eþ (he comeþ, 'he cometh/he comes’). Present Past Verbs Singular Singular Infinitive inflection Participle Plural Participle Plural 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd person person person person person person Regular verbs Strong -ende, - -eþ/eth (- -en (-es, - i- -en - -e (-est) - -en -en -e -est Weak ynge es) eþ) -ed -ede -edest -ede -eden Irregular verbs am art is aren wast beende, Been "be" been beth, ibeen was was weren beynge be bist biþ were been Moten - - mot must mot moten - muste mustest muste musten "must" chulen - - schal schalt schal schulen - scholde scholdest scholde scholde "should" Middle English Activity 1150CE ~ 1500CE Verbs: Annotating The Canterbury Tales ‘to prick’ - 3rd person present singular ‘Help’ – past tense Middle English Reflect 1150CE ~ 1500CE KLT ME Text 2: The Pardoner’s Tale Using the resources in this powerpoint, annotate & fill in the table for Middle English Text 2. Text and translation source: https://stella.glasgow.ac.uk/readings/me-2- from-the-pardoners-tale.html Middle English Dictionary: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10625/10625-h/10625-h.htm